Song · Boomtown Rats
“Someone's Looking At You” by Boomtown Rats
From the album The Fine Art of Surfacing (1979)
“Someone's Looking At You” by Boomtown Rats appears on 2 radio countdowns from 1 station between 2002 and 2003. It was first released in 1979 on the album The Fine Art of Surfacing. Its best result is #616 on the Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #3,867 alternative song of all time.
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"Someone's Looking at You" closed out the singles run from The Boomtown Rats' 1979 album The Fine Art of Surfacing, and it's Bob Geldof doing paranoia with a grin. Built on organ and produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange, it paints a humid, Orwellian world where the watchers never blink, and it's a lot funnier than a song about surveillance has any right to be.
Geldof wrote himself into it, too: one verse points back to him shooting his mouth off at a Greenpeace anti-whaling rally in Trafalgar Square. His own website frames the whole thing as a statement about fame. It went to number two in Ireland and number 4 in the UK in early 1980.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 1025 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002) | 2002 |
| 2003 | 616 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
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